


There Is a Balm in Gilead

by starcunning (Vannevar)



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Commissar, Gen, Imperial Guard, Inquisition, Lisenne Faulkner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-04 20:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vannevar/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the forty-first millennium, Commissar Lisenne Faulkner and the officers of the Circinni 38th gird their souls — and the souls of an entire planet — against corruption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Shield me from the maelstrom._

Outside the boundaries of her ship, the Warp raged. The eddies and currents of travel in its depths were mercurial at best — destructive at worst, and delay was enough to make any trooper nervous.

_Prove this ship worthy of protecting Your legions …_

Commissar Lisenne Faulkner had been attached to the Circinni 38th for several years, her tour with the regiment all but complete. Its numbers had been recently bolstered by a fresh tithe of troopers from the home world. The Barghests — as they called themselves — were en route to deal with an uprising on a hive world called Aramos. Lisenne had paged through the reports on her dataslate without seeing the words displayed before her — she’d read it over several times already, and, nearing the end of warp transit, was restless to leave the Immaterium.

_… Who bring Your light wherever they travel._

The Barghests were growing nervous, too; Lisenne could tell, from their hunched shoulders and darkening looks. Colonel Aoife mab-Iona — bolder than Lisenne herself — was unafraid to make a nuisance of herself to the Captain of their conveyance vessel, and through him to make inquiries of their Navigator.

Lisenne was not fool enough to bother the Navigator herself — she did not care for psykers, even those officially sanctioned by the Imperium, though in fact most Navigators seemed to prefer to hold themselves aloof from the rest of their ships.

This one, Navigator Nathanos Hallett, was no exception. Lisenne had seen him a scant handful of times, when she’d had the honor and privilege to attend the bridge of the ship. He was tall and spindly, and wore his ornate robes like a pole wore a tent. He was also completely hairless, which was nearly a shame; he might have been attractive otherwise.

Colonel mab-Iona had related Hallet’s rising nervousness third-hand as well, which certainly did not set her adjutant Commissar to her ease. So it was that Lisenne Faulkner remained in her stateroom, not really reading reports and not really processing the necessary paperwork that came with her post, instead listening. Every shudder of ancient metal was a dire portent, and Lisenne swore she could hear the howling of fell winds all around her — but that was merely affectation, wasn’t it? She was far from the outer hull of their vessel.

Lifting her hands from her work, Lisenne briefly pressed right palm to left hand and both then to her chest, making the sign of the Aquila and repeating the Litany of Warp Travel once more. Around her, the ship juddered, pitching and yawing as if it were nothing more than an ill-maintained PDF truck gone too quickly over a series of speed bumps. The luminators in her stateroom flickered and dimmed; gravity seemed to fail for a split second.

"Fear is naught, for my faith is strong!" Hardly two words into the incantation and all was well again; the groans of metal now only a memory, luminators burning steadfastly in their niches. Lisenne sighed, almost relieved, at least until the address crackled to life.

"This is your Captain speaking," a crisp voice intoned. "Navigator Hallett has made the discretionary observation that the Immaterium is in a state of upheaval greater yet than we were prepared to compass. At his behest I have disengaged our Warp drives and will continue through the Void until such time as Navigator Hallett deems it prudent to continue."

He sounded as frayed with annoyance as Lisenne felt. It was almost a comfort to know that she was not the only one this incident had put a scare into; Lisenne only hoped her Guardsmen would master it as wholly as she did.

— — — — —

She might actually hate Valkyries more than she hated Warp transit, Lisenne decided, though at least the cramped quarters of the Valkyrie would last only a few hours and would end with her feet on solid ground. The last several days had been tumultuous ones, and as Lisenne looked around at the woad-covered faces of ten Barghests (and one green-robed psyker, she acknowledged in spite of herself), she saw the wear beginning to show. The sudden drop out of the Warp had left them on the fringes of a small system they had initially believed to be uninhabited; it had taken some time to get their bearings and map their location within the Imperium to their star charts. They were still several thousand lightyears distant from Aramos, and Navigator Hallett was unwilling to risk another jump, citing warp storms, though he was optimistic that they would move outsystem soon. So they had continued on through the void, periodically checking to see if the metaphorical waters of the Immaterium had yet calmed.

Lisenne didn’t know who it was who had first mentioned that the charts indicated an Imperial holding on the sixth planet in the system they were skirting. Astropathic communication was spotty, thanks to the storm, but the choir had managed to signal the Munitorum, relaying a message about their aborted jump and unexpected change in course. They had also mentioned Gilead, the world in question.

The Departmento Munitorum had commissioned the Circinni 38th to re-establish contact with the world, apparently long forgotten by charts and out of contact for at least three centuries. Lisenne would almost be looking forward to her diplomatic mission if it had meant a smooth ride planetside in something like an Aquila transport. But as none was available, and Colonel mab-Iona had deemed it more prudent to bring armed troops along with their diplomatic detachment, Lisenne found herself enjoying the company of not only the commissioned officers, but Sergeant Moiread mab-Boudica and her squad … and Razia Sultana of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, who was no Barghest and looked rather glum at the fact that she’d been called from the ship for this.

She almost sympathized with the Astropath—the psyker was not the only one with misgivings about their peace mission, as was all too obvious on some of the troopers’ faces. Worse, Razia was evidently the junior among her choir, and had obviously pulled this duty because it was almost a certitude that she would not be leaving Gilead with the rest of them.

"Ten minutes to landing," their pilot informed them.

Glancing away from the cadre of women, Lisenne looked out into a cloud-choked landscape, the spires of a great city piercing the gloom. She was looking for anti-air emplacements, and found none immediately, which set her at least slightly to her ease. The Guardsmen had announced themselves from orbit, and had been given coordinates at which to land, but the Commissar was not immediately convinced there was no trap they were springing.

As the clouds swallowed the sun, whiting out her view, Lisenne looked back toward the Barghests. Sergeant mab-Boudica was staring her down, the slashes of blue inscribed across both cheeks contorting as she narrowed her dark eyes.

Lisenne cleared her throat. “Duty takes many forms, Guardsmen. This is, I will admit, an unusual mission. As Barghests, you — we — think of ourselves as the dogs of war, spectral and ruthless, and by the Throne, you have each proven it so. But every hound has a master, whom she loves and obeys: ours is the Immortal Emperor of Mankind. If it is His will, we can instead be guide dogs, and bring the people of this world back to the light of civilization. Rejoice, then, for this is a victory few have tasted. For the Emperor!”

The Barghests all responded with enthusiasm, seeming set at ease by Lisenne’s conviction — or at the very least distracted from their worries for the moment. Razia Sultana’s brow was still deeply furrowed above her useless eyes, but there was little that Lisenne could do about that, only hope that this world was a decent one and her lot on it would not be overly trying.

The world outside the window drew nearer every second. The metal twisted elegantly as it reached upward, like fingers of an outstretched hand. Though cloudy, the air was clear enough, not poisoned or choked with smog as so many worlds were, and the city itself had a tidy character to it. Carried deeper into the city, she was surprised to find a large chunk of land given over to a verdant park, a lake glittering at its center. The people of Gilead were unaware, she thought, of how lucky they were.

— — — — —

The men sent to meet the Imperial transport were all as tidy as their city, pale-skinned and violet eyed with neatly combed hair and pressed suits, and they regarded the Barghests with no small amount of surprise. It was Lisenne who stepped forward to offer her gloved hand first, and the Barghests followed suit, the awkward moment expunged by social pleasantry.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I am Commissar Lisenne Faulkner, adjutant to the Circinni 38th; this is their commander Colonel mab-Iona, and we are delighted on the behalf of Him-on-Earth to have found our way to Gilead.”  
“Commissar, I am pleased to introduce myself to you; I am Senator Benjamin Columbers.” one of them said, the oldest among them. He clasped hands with each of the women, studying the Barghests’ faces with barely-veiled confusion. “Where’s your escort?” he asked with a cant of his head.  
A peal of nervous laughter escaped her lips. “The Colonel I have introduced to you already, but I am pleased also to introduce Major Grainne mab-Sibeal, Sergeant Moiread mab-Boudica, and her fire-team—“  
“Well, that’s certainly impressive, my dear, but not at all what I meant.”  
“Certainly I do not wish to exclude Mamzel Razia Sultana, of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica,” she said with a nod at the woman in green, who bowed her head respectfully, her polite smile shadowed beneath her hood.  
“Blessings of the Emperor to you, Senator,” Sultana said, lifting her hands to her chest to make the sign of the aquila. “In truth, these women are  _my_  escort.”  
Columbers replied in kind after a moment, though the motion was clumsy. “I see,” the senator said dubiously a moment or two later. “Forgive me; I expected … Well, truthfully, none of us were sure what to expect. May I introduce to you my son, Randall Columbers, Praetor of Gennesaret?” he said then, nodding to one of the younger men in his assembly.

There was quite a bit of family resemblance between them: the same aquiline nose and angular cheekbones, their eyes the same fathomless violet. Randall Columbers’s hair was darker than his father’s, and worn slightly longer, the only touch of eccentricity about his ordered appearance. He smiled to greet Razia, clasping the Astropath’s hand in both of his own and doing the same to each of the command staff in turn, Lisenne last of all.

“My father has been remiss,” he told her, laughter in his voice. “Welcome to Gilead, ladies; we devoted servants of the Emperor are pleased to receive you.”  
“Thank you,” Lisenne said then, inclining her head slightly.  
“May I show you to the rotunda?” the elder Columbers inquired then, and the Commissar conferred with the command staff by glances, but it was the blind Razia who spoke first.  
“If it is all the same to you, Senator, I would prefer to first see the Astra Telepathica offices.” Lisenne didn’t miss the way they all flinched at that, but a moment later, Columbers nodded.  
“Very well,” he said then, and he turned to offer his arm stiffly to the astropath. His lessers swarmed around the Barghests to do the same, establishing their informal pecking order without speaking as Lisenne looked on. It was easy enough to tell the lesser functionaries, who eyed her troopers with suspicion and interest, but the men offering their arms to her command staff were older and more distinguished.  
“Commissar?” Randall Columbers smiled at her just slightly, his arm held out stiffly, and she nodded her gratitude, a gloved hand resting upon his forearm. He glanced down in the direction of her feet, shuffled a half-step away from her, and turned to face forward.  
Lisenne allowed herself a bemused smile, and a moment of worry about what several hours in a Valkyrie had left her smelling like, but she said nothing, her gaze intent upon the green-and-gold hood Razia wore as the group formed up. “Thank you,” she said absently, and lifted her free hand to adjust her peaked cap.

Lisenne couldn’t help but notice the way Senator Columbers treated Razia as though she were half made of glass. He coaxed her down the stairs with surprising delicacy, though the Commissar found herself half-annoyed at the display.

So too did Razia, it seemed, for it was halfway down from the landing pad that she spoke quietly to her escort. “I thank you for your candor, Senator, but the Emperor is my sight.”  
“Oh,” Columbers laughed. “I see.”  
Lisenne and Randall shared a glance at that, his expression mirroring her wry smile before both of them smothered it.

The city they descended into was as clean and bright as the upper spires of any hive Lisenne had visited, the air abuzz with the hum of servitors as they whizzed passed. Many of these made the clack-clack-clack of a snapping camera lens, and as they approached a crowded thoroughfare, the assembled guard troop lifted their hands in hail and salute. The Gileadi rejoiced to see them, never mind the weapons at their backs, though Lisenne saw them whispering among themselves as they passed. Well. Let them be curious, for now; the sight of Imperial agents among them had been rare, she surmised, but in time they would grow accustomed to their place among the Emperor’s flock once more.

— — — — —

The Officio Astra Telepathica was a beautiful edifice, its façade done in gleaming panels of black marble giving way to white upon its upper reaches, the ribs of its crenellations decorated with gold-barred lamps. The sigil of its office was everywhere, graven into stone and leafed with gold; the entryway was presided over by a blindfolded human figure with arms outstretched, the wings of the aquila splayed behind.

Its outer beauty belied the disuse within. Banks of cogitators sat inert. A thick fluff of dust had settled over the whole of the place, which stirred up around the Barghests’ feet. Several of the troopers sneezed. Razia dropped her escort’s arm to move through the place, her fingers leaving furrows in their wake with whatever she touched. She paused before one pad, and went very still. The room became tense, an electric hum seeming to vibrate through the stillness, and Razia turned back toward the Gileadi with a frown.

“How long has it been since this office was in use?” she asked.  
“More than two centuries,” he admitted. “Several of my opponents wanted this building demolished, made into an office for—“  
“Forgive my rudeness, but that matters very little to me at this juncture,” Sultana said, looking at him with her blinded eyes. “They died here.”  
“Yes,” he admitted. “The storms came on very suddenly, and the choir …”  
“Your equipment is all blown out,” Razia Sultana told him with a sigh. “The Adeptus Astra Telepathica will need to send for replacements, and for the Mechanicus to come and install them.”  
“We have a Mechanicum office here,” Randall Columbers offered, dropping Lisenne’s arm to cross to the other woman. “At your word, my lady, I will charge them with aiding you here.”  
“Thank you, that would be very helpful,” Sultana said, favoring him with a smile. “As well, if there are other cities with astropathic offices, I need their equipment sent here to see if any of it can be salvaged. I’d like to have something at least partly functional before my brethren arrive.”  
Lisenne smiled slightly at the psyker’s candor, and found herself nodding.  
“I will have the pieces the city of Lot kept in storage sent along forthwith,” one of the statesmen at Lisenne’s back said, and other promises joined his.  
“Please, leave me to begin my work,” Sultana said then.  
“Senator Guildenstern will remain behind should you have need of his help, and to escort you to your apartments when you wish to retire,” Columbers promised, withdrawing with a bow. There was some shuffling of ladies and their escorts then, but it was only a few moments later that they left the astropath to her work.

— — — — —

The weeks that followed were a flurry of invitations—Senator Columbers’s wife Mireille asked Lisenne and the Barghests to join her for dinner. It was a pleasanter affair for Lisenne than the others, and Colonel mab-Iona took particular offense when one of the lady’s other guests touched her tattooed cheek without permission. For the commissar it was a simple and diverting amusement, and Mireille soon sent other letters after.

_My dear Commissar,_  they invariably began, and followed after with invitations to Templum service, or to plays, and at last to join her and her son at the arboretum. Lisenne demurred more often than was perhaps polite, but Mireille Columbers was not the only one who had extended her invitations, and Lisenne had refused her in favor of visiting the Eyes, a local branch of law enforcement that followed very closely after the Adeptus Arbites, and in favor of aiding Razia and the Mechanicum where she might with repairing the Astropathic equipment. She was little enough help at that, if she was to be honest, but she was not much for idle mornings and late nights as seemed to be Gileadi social custom. At last, however, she had capitulated, and one of Mireille’s footmen had come to accompany her on her way to the arboretum. She hardly went anywhere alone any longer, and the senators seemed to vie for the opportunity to send their adjutants to aid her or her command staff, the servant men dropping crumbs of their master’s interests along the way.

It was overall a more pleasant tour of duty than most she had served.

The arboretum was verdant and lush, the sun shining upon the dappled surface of its lake, though Lisenne’s peaked cap kept most of the glare from her eyes. Randall Columbers was shading his mother with a parasol as Lisenne approached, and he smiled, handing it off to the servant to clasp Lisenne’s bare hands in his own. The sight of her dress uniform seemed to nettle him less than it did his mother, who was frowning at the commissar’s trousers. The Commissar remarked to herself, not for the first time, that she did not look much like her son; little of her ruddy coloring and golden hair was reflected in Randall’s exacting mien, so much more like his father’s. Only the color of their eyes was similar, but she’d had yet to meet anyone on Gilead whose eyes were not violet.  
“Commissar,” he greeted her, withdrawing several steps.  
“Praetor,” she responded with a polite nod, and turned toward her hostess. “Lady Columbers,” she said.  
“My darling Lisenne,” Mireille said, leaning in to take up her hands in turn. “Why you insist upon such dreadful garb I’ll never know,” she drawled a moment later.  
“I’m afraid I didn’t pack much else,” Lisenne said, smiling.  
“Oh, never mind,” Randall said then. “It photographs well, Mother. You know how important that is to Father,” he reminded her gently. Lisenne frowned at the thought of being his accessory, but took his arm when he presented it. By instinct she, too, glanced down at the space between their bodies as they came together—she’d learned quickly enough not to stand too close together or she risked a “gentle reprimand” from the Eyes.  
“The weather is lovely here,” Lisenne said as they made off, following a path around the lake, and Mireille nodded.  
“It’s ingenious, isn’t it? The Mechanicum figured out some time ago how to seed the clouds such that it rains at night, mostly,” Mireille told her, coming up on her other side, the servant carrying her parasol further abreast.  
“There are quite a few technological marvels here that the priesthood of Mars will be interested to rediscover,” Lisenne said, pressing her lips into a thin line. “I have met several of the adepts helping to restore the Astropathic equipment, and they are to be commended for their candor.”  
“Gilead prides itself upon its men of learning,” Randall said to her then with another of his eager smiles. The expression made him look less like the aging Senator. “I wanted to ask you, Commissar, about the women you travel with.”  
“You could just as well have asked them yourself,” Lisenne pointed out. “But I’ve traveled with the Barghests for five years; I think I can answer your questions.”  
“It shouldn’t surprise you to know their tattoos are a point of oddity here,” Mireille told her, and Lisenne shook her head.  
“They’re a point of oddity most places, really,” Lisenne said. “They ‘honor the faces of their mothers,’ is how Major mab-Sibeal explained it to me once. Every woman in the bloodline has the same basic pattern, though some have embellishments. All of the Barghests who make it home will get a double-bar inked from lips to chin, for example.”  
“Why would they do that?” Randall asked.  
“It’s the mark of an accomplished warrior,” Lisenne said.  
“Colonel mab-Iona has it already,” Mireille observed.  
“She’s more a veteran of the Guard than I am, truth be told,” said Lisenne. “I think one of the draftees must have been able to do it for her before I arrived; she’s always had it since I’ve known her.”  
“Doesn’t that ever cause problems?” Randall wondered. “Being younger than her.”  
“Not with her, thankfully,” Lisenne said. “My first posting wasn’t as easy.”  
He only glanced at her, lifting his brow, and she lifted a hand to brush her fringe from her hair. In the pause she heard the sound of their footsteps, and a musical chirping, a trill that repeated itself after a moment.  
“The Petrostok Besiegers,” she said a moment later. “They’re half-cousins to the Vostroyans; same system, I think.” He looked at her blankly. “It was a mixed unit; they won’t post me to all-male regiments, but the command staff were all male. I spent a year with them as a cadet, but when my senior Commissar left them in my hands, the transition wasn’t as smooth as he might have hoped.” She frowned slightly at that memory, and heard the warble of music again, slowing her steps to a stop. “I didn’t realize any birds had survived here.”  
“They haven’t,” Randall said. “Wait; I’ll show you.”

He looked half a fool then, in his suit readying himself to climb a tree, and Mireille stood at her shoulder, smiling slightly.  
“He’s quite enamored of you, you know,” she told the Commissar, and Lisenne simply cleared her throat.  
“I am flattered and gratified to know it,” she said, groping for pleasantries. “I’m glad to know I may count your family as friends here as we work to bring Gilead back into the Emperor’s light.”  
“May it shine forever,” Mireille agreed. Randall had found himself a handhold and hauled himself a few feet up the trunk of the robust trunk of the tree, and he reached out into its branches, coming back with something clasped between his hands which he pressed into her own.  
It was heavy and cool to the touch, and she heard that same trill of birdsong muffled by her flesh, vibrating against her skin. The construct was avian in its form, lacquered in blacks and browns. and gently ticking within. Lisenne laughed, then.  
“How ingenious,” she said. “I suspect that Gilead will see an upswing in tourism once reintegration is complete,” Lisenne continued.  
“They made the old ones turn with keys,” Randall told her. “Those are too heavy to fly under their own power.”  
She let go of the avian servitor, and it fluttered back up to the canopy of the nearby trees, its warbling call sounding once more, and Randall gave her his arm that they might complete their circuit of the lake.

Soon, the sound of human voices overtook the snatches of birdsong, and Randall uttered an oath under his breath that earned him a sharp look from his mother.

“Forgive his manners, Commissar,” she said, but Randall was already turning her away. By instinct, Lisenne looked back, and saw the throng gathered around a platform.

The Commissar saw the woman first, then the gallows from which she hung, her crimes blazoned upon the crossbar. The onlookers were not unruly, but they were eager for other prisoners—all female, all guilty of the same crime—twisting lifelessly from other ropes. Her green eyes flicked upward for just a moment, fixated on the scarlet letters that marked each gallows, and then Randall seized her by the elbow, jerking her away.

“Adultery is still a crime to hang for, here?” the Commissar demanded in a flare of temper.  
Mother and son stood agog then, and Randall withdrew from her by steps.  
“You can read?” Mireille asked, softly.  
“You mustn’t do that,” Randall said in the same moment.  
“Of course I can read,” Lisenne said then, her eyes narrowed. “Not a Progena exists that cannot.”  
“Listen to me very carefully, my dear,” Mireille said, her tone soft as she reached out to snatch up Lisenne’s hands. “While you are an offworlder and not accounted for in our laws, it would not be a good idea to display that particular talent in public again.”  
Lisenne frowned, but she nodded. She did not take Randall’s arm again.

— — — — —

The walls were not thick enough in the house where the Barghests had been billeted to drown out their revelries entirely, and Lisenne’s lips were pursed as the hallway disgorged her into the common room where knots of troopers had arranged themselves to play at dice or other games, the women chattering in their milk tongue. Lisenne dropped herself into a chair and looked up to find Grainne mab-Sibeal regarding her with lofted brow, her chestnut hair unruly and loosed from her usual taut braid.  
“Deal me in,” Lisenne said, glancing down at the scatter of chips in front of her. “Unless I’m intruding.”  
“Razia’s left for the evening. You can have her spot,” said Grainne, handing her deck over to her superior officer.  
Aoife mab-Iona nodded her agreement as she began to shuffle. “Radagast left to escort her a few moments ago. She has a presentation to make at the gubernatorial palace in the morning,” the Colonel informed her, stern lips pulled down into a moue of concentration.  
“A pity. I assume she was winning?” Lisenne asked.  
“She was,” Moiread mab-Boudica said, reaching across Lisenne to take up a cup and splash out a measure of amasec. “Funny how they seem to do that.”  
The Barghests all laughed, and Lisenne shook her head. “How are things here?” she asked, gathering up her hand and tapping it against the table.  
“I didn’t realize you were here to collect reports, Commissar,” Grainne said with a smirk.  
“I’m not. This is strictly off the record,” Lisenne said, arranging the cards in her hand.  
“You’ve been too busy with Randall Columbers to take much notice,” Aoife nettled her, smiling like a meddling aunt.  
“I have not,” Lisenne protested, “and you’ve had your share of gentleman callers as well.”  
“Yeah,” Moiread agreed. “My girls, too. I’m getting this weird impression they want us to marry in.”  
“That’s what I thought,” Lisenne said, flicking a chip into the pot. “But I haven’t quite figured out why. Unless they’re keeping them incredibly well-hidden, they have fewer mutants than I’d expect.”  
“And no psykers,” Aoife said. “Mamzel Razia said she hasn’t felt one yet.”  
“Not my area of expertise,” Lisenne admitted, tossing her cards into the pile. “This either.”  
“What’s the problem, then?” Moiread wondered, taking a sip of her amasec. “This should be easy, and we’ll be heroes to both sides.”  
“In my experience, Sergeant, nothing is ever easy,” said Lisenne.

— — — — —

“Wake up, Commissar,” Colonel mab-Iona said. “Razia Sultana is dead.”

That did more for Lisenne’s state than a pot of recaf, and she jolted upright, hurrying herself through the motions of dressing and binding back her dark hair. It was scarcely first light, but the Barghests had all assembled, along with a handful of Eyes and the entirety of the Palmer house staff, who had been playing host to the astropath thanks to their proximity to the Astropath’s offices.  
“Take me to her,” Lisenne said, and they did, a parade of Imperial women guarded on both sides by Gileadi men. Along the way, the Eyes apprised her of the situation, but for all their warning and description, there was little that could have prepared her for the sight.

Lisenne tread lightly in the room that had once been Razia’s, a room that had been given over to a charnel stink of blood. Razia Sultana lay in her bed, her naked body twisted in a mockery of nightmare. It was broken at the joints, limbs hacked from her body, her torso opened from navel to throat. The butcher who had killed her had laid open her ribcage and made a pulp of her heart, leaving her viscera spilled upon the bedsheets. Her tongue was torn out, her false eyes gouged from her face. The astropath’s green blindfold was in tatters, matted to her temples by blood along with strands of her dark hair.  
Lisenne turned away for a moment, her stomach weak, and then she looked upon the scene again, forcing herself to remember that Razia Sultana had been under her command as much as the Barghests. The corpse before her, a horror of death, had been a living person who had played tarot the night before. Razia Sultana had been the axis on which this world’s hopes for reintegration had turned.

“Excuse me,” Lisenne said weakly. “I need to make a vox call.”


	2. Chapter 2

The choir shipside had refused Lisenne’s requests to send another astropath down to the surface. She couldn’t blame them, not after the scene she had described to them. The astropath’s conductor told her then that once they were certain of why Razia was killed, they would be happy to return to Gilead and aid in their martyred sister’s cause. With a sigh, Lisenne had accepted, and then she had given them instructions to contact the Departmento Munitorum and keep them apprised. The conductor had sworn to do that, and then he had left Lisenne alone with the Barghests and the Gileadi, and no promise of reinforcements.

She felt no small amount of guilt about the Astropath’s death—they had entrusted Razia Sultana to an unknown, and the woman had suffered for it. In the days that followed, the Barghests had withdrawn from Gileadi society somewhat. Although they could not travel unaccompanied, Colonel mab-Iona had demanded her troop travel in superior numbers to their native escort. After a heated argument, Senator Columbers had assented. Damn the cameras, Lisenne had said, and had traded her finery for duty carapace and her bolter.

She was no longer so charming on Randall Columbers’s arm when he accompanied her to make inquiries of the Eyes. His expression had been dismayed when she had told him she was expected at the medicae to read the autopsy reports prepared on the subject of Razia Sultana’s murder.

He had agreed to go in order to save face—hers as well as his own. Truthfully, the Praetor’s presence tended to open doors, so the fiction that he was there to spare her the sin of reading was welcome enough, but it left both of them drawn and snappish at the end of the day.

The lights overhead in the hospital only augmented that, too bright and sharp by half, leaving the Commissar pinching the bridge of her nose as Praetor Columbers led her up from the sub-basements. Their facilities were better-kept than most of the hospitals she’d had the dubious pleasure of visiting, but there was another key difference as well.

“Tell me, Praetor,” she began as the pair entered a lift together, moving to stand on opposite walls as he thumbed the runes. “Why did I see so many schoolchildren on my way in this morning?”  
Randall Columbers considered this for a long moment in silence, then he said, “The children of Gilead are educated early in the workings of their own body. As you have cause to know already, we are proud of our Biologis here.”  
“But these are not the children of the Machine Cult,” Lisenne pressed, pushing off from the wall as he offered her his arm once more.  
“No,” he agreed as they emerged into the atrium. Rather than cross to the glass façade and the exits, he turned her away from the light. Her muscles stiffened, and she fell behind a step before resuming her place at his side. The impulse mildly unnerved her, and the Commissar reminded herself as she swallowed that she was the servant of the Emperor, and she was free to abandon this man’s lead at her whim.

Nevertheless he drew her onward.

“Then why are school children brought to the hospital? Is it for vaccination?” she asked when she found her voice again.  
Randall Columbers only looked at her for a brief moment. “No,” he said, his mouth a grim line.

 

She heard the crying of infants then, and another scream, raw and throaty and female, and Lisenne paused. His arm jerked from her grasp, and Randall looked back at her, stepping back to take her by the elbow.

Her green eyes settled upon the crown of curls born by a boy no more than eight. She could not see his face; he was looking in the same direction she was. Lisenne and the boy, both with their keepers, looked into an operating theatre where a young woman, red-faced, was screaming and squalling with the pain of labor. She looked left, then right, and saw other shoals of children, all dutifully looking on. Randall's expression was impassive, unfazed, and she had the distinct impression he had seen this plenty of times before.

 

“Is that appropriate?” she wondered then, softly.  
“Is there anything more appropriate, Commissar?” he said in reply.  
“I don’t want to watch this,” Lisenne said, averting her eyes as though embarrassed for the mother whose pain had become some spectacle. “What sort of punishment is this?”  
“It isn’t a punishment,” he said soothingly. “It’s simply a consequence. The children see the natal tubes, as well; we learn early that there are better ways. Cleaner ways.”  
“Natal tubes?” she echoed, blinking up at that implacable face.  
“Ah,” he said, and he smiled. “I should have arranged a tour; I’m sorry.”

He took her from the theatre then, on unsteady feet, and she didn’t need to think of the Eyes to keep the proper distance between his body and her own. They joined with a throng of children, some of them sneaking shy, furtive glances at her as they were shepherded along by matrons and Mechanicum adjutants. Thick panes of glass insulated them from the work taking place beyond, red-robed genetors tending to their creches of black steel and murky fluids.

In truth, Lisenne found it no less disturbing than she had the screaming, huffing woman, and something about it gave her pause. She dropped Columbers’s arm to peer at a cogitator display through the glass, and found herself frowning at the vital signs.

“Are they growing servitors?” she asked then, her brow knitting.  
“No,” he said. “They are tending to the future of Gilead.” He reached out to take up her arm and drew her away from the window, his brow creased. “When Gilead was isolated, we lost more than most would admit. There was a wave of mutation among men and animals, and many had to be culled.” She nodded, then, thinking of the chirping constructs. “We adapted. We found safer ways of doing things. We keep no psykers here, we regiment our diets heavily, and …” He trailed off then, biting the inside of his cheek in thought. “And we raise our sons in cribs of iron.”  
She looked up into his face then, as if seeing him for the first time.  
“ _Replicae,_ ” she accused him breathlessly.  
“Nothing so base as that,” he promised. “I still have my will, Lisenne; I still have my soul and my faith.”  
But he was not a man, she had decided; he was a husk, a copy of a copy, and in the end his father’s flaws would out.

She left him standing among the genetors and headed for sunlight. Her purposeful stride parted bodies around her like the prow of a ship cutting through waves, and she saw surprise in faces as she passed, noted the tightening of jaws and darkening of brows. Her heels resounded hollowly on the pavement, and with every step, the clacking of the camera servitors.

— — — — —

She joined the Lady Columbers at tea the next morning after her heavy insistence. Mireille sat poised and elegant, her aging hands cupping a frail teacup as she spoke over its rim. “My dear girl,” she greeted the Commissar, and Lisenne flinched, bowing her head just slightly.  
She settled in opposite the matron, and one of the house servants poured her out a measure of tea. “Good morning,” Lisenne said.  
“I have heard some disappointing things from my son,” said Mireille, and Lisenne hid her grimace behind a mouthful of scalding liquid. “Lisenne, I cannot overstate how dangerous it is for you to travel unescorted.”  
“I appreciate your concern, Mamzel,” said the Commissar, “especially given recent events, but I hardly think you need to worry.”  
“It would ease my heart a great deal if you would be gracious enough to receive my son to your side once more,” Mireille told her.  
Lisenne swirled her spoon through murky liquid, pursing her lips in thought. “May I broach a difficult subject with you, Mamzel?” asked Lisenne.  
“What is it?”

“Your son,” Lisenne began. “Is he that in truth?”  
The elder woman only smiled, reaching for a pastry. “Of course he is mine,” she said. “I have raised and nurtured him. I did not bear him, that much is true.”  
“I have seen the creches,” Lisenne said.  
“Of course you have,” Mireille replied, tone bland. “Tell me about your family, Lisenne.”  
“I have none,” said the Commissar.  
“An orphan,” Mireille frowned, pity in her tone. “Do you remember your parents?”  
“Only a very little,” she admitted.  
“And do you remember those who cared for you when you were a girl? Who raised you to the Emperor’s service and made you all that you are today, good and ill?”  
Lisenne only nodded, her expression grown furtive and a touch uncomfortable. “Of course,” she said. Mireille only lifted a brow in reply.

“He may not be my blood and I did not carry him, but he is still my son, and I would see him happy and treated sweetly. I know it is a time of trial for you, but he has stresses of his own, like his father.” Lisenne decided she had not been so thoroughly chastised since she had left the scholam, and dared raise no protest. “If Randall has been short with you, it is because the foolish words of his opponents wear upon him.”  
“He’s spoken very little of such things to me,” said the Commissar.  
“I’m certain it’s nothing,” Mireille said, trying to dismiss her own concerns with a wave of her hand. “Something about levies on the transport of your Astropath’s requisition holding matters up,” she said.  
Lisenne set her teacup down. “Do you think it’s serious?” she asked then.  
“Oh, I doubt it,” said the senator’s wife. “None can long deny the will of the Emperor that we rejoin His fold, but they are more the fool for trying. I suppose with all that’s happened, the equipment would be left to wait in any case. Poor girl,” Mireille sighed.  
“Yes,” Lisenne agreed distractedly, taking another sip of her tea.  
“He is heavy with grief for her, you must know that,” Mireille said. “Forgive him, and he will repay you in gladness.”  
“Maybe,” Lisenne hedged.  
“You might at least allow him to escort you to Templum to stand the Long Vigil,” said Mireille. “It’s not long off. I’ll call Judith and have something made so that you don’t have to wear that dreadful  _uniform_  …”

 

— — — — —

The Barghests’ command staff were still picking at the leavings of breakfast when Lisenne joined them, a local vox chattering news in the background.  
“Anything interesting?” asked the Commissar, reaching in to pluck up a glossy-skinned violet fruit, peeling it with a frown of effort.  
“Not particularly,” admitted Colonel mab-Iona. “There was a small disturbance in the underlevels last night, but the Eyes took care of it.”  
“My name didn’t happen to come up?” she asked with amusement.  
“Should it have?” mab-Iona wondered.  
“I slipped Columbers’s escort yesterday,” she shrugged. “I suppose I expected some sort of reprimand or denouncement.”  
“I don’t think anyone is as impressed with your promenade as you are,” teased Major mab-Sibeal over her recaf. Lisenne opened her mouth to retort, then paused. “All you did was walk home.”  
“Alone,” Lisenne said.  
“And why would they want to report that you’d done that, Commissar?” asked the Major, her tattoos distending slightly as she pursed her lips. “Think about it,” she added.  
Lisenne nodded her understanding a moment later. “At least we know their remembrancers are on the side of the Imperium,” she pointed out a moment later.  
“Oh?” wondered mab-Sibeal.  
“Evidently there’s a faction of secessionists,” Lisenne noted dryly. “Mireille Columbers let that one slip this morning,” she said, taking a bite of her fruit.  
“Nobody mentioned it to us,” said the Major.  
“Nobody mentioned a number of things to us,” the Commissar replied.  
“Do you think it has something to do with Sultana?” wondered mab-Sibeal.  
“I’m certain the Eyes have already investigated,” said the Colonel.  
“Maybe,” Lisenne agreed. “Nevertheless the Munitorum should be kept apprised of the situation.”  
“Of course, Commissar,” said Major mab-Sibeal, taking up her cup of recaf and pushing herself to her feet.

— — — — —

It felt like dirty work, rifling through the Eyes’ archives with the names of Randall Columbers' political opponents, but he hadn’t asked her to share anything she’d found, only fetched and carried and let her make annotations like some baseborn scribe from morning til night. Most often he bought her dinner afterward, but she never let herself forget what he was, even as he sat across the table from her, nudging a small box across its surface between their empty plates.

“Sanguinalia doesn’t begin for another week,” she protested.  
“I know,” he said loftily, sitting back and folding his hands before him. “I just thought that you could do with something to cheer you,” he said.  
Lisenne took the present up dubiously. It fit into one hand easily enough, but it was deceptively heavy, and she looked over at him. Randall nodded in eager encouragement, and she unknotted the bow, setting the box down again on the tabletop to lift the lid.

Nestled into a bed of cotton there was a small bird, the red lacquer of its wings faded and peeling to reveal the heavy, pitted metal underneath. It had eyes of violet crystal and a short, rounded body, a blush of crimson paint at its throat. She took it from the box then, her fingers stroking the etched metal, and her fingertip caught on one of the tailfeathers, pulling it from its place. She fit the grooved piece of metal into a slot on the bird’s back and turned, hearing the click of a winding mechanism. When she took the key out, a few sour notes resounded from the bird’s iron frame, turning the heads of a few other diners. She laughed then in embarassment, smothering the sound with both hands until it died away a moment later.  
“Thank you,” she said then, and he smiled. She settled the clockwork bird back into its nest of fluff.

The Praetor’s hand-vox chimed then. “Excuse me,” he said, his expression sobering, and she watched him retreat out into the street. Randall's silhouette paced and fretted as the call went on, and she frowned, willing her attention away from him. She tied the parcel back up neatly and had slipped it into a pocket on her coat when Columbers returned to her side and offered his hand.  
“What was that about?” she wondered.  
“It was for you,” he said, his face ashen.

— — — — —

A half-hour later she was in the underhives, checking her ammunition loadout one last time before Columbers offered a hand up out of the transport vehicle. She took it, and stepped out into a dimly-lit plaza, its plaster façades faded and peeling. Then she straightened her jacket and approached the Eyes.  
Private Liadhain mab-Nuala was speaking with them quite animatedly, blood pouring from her split lip to stain her chin. With every enthusiastic declaration the little wound yawned wider like a mouth of its own. Flecks of scarlet decorated the lapel of the man questioning her, giving the eye on his badge too many discolored pupils.

“You should not have come alone,” the officer admonished mab-Nuala, and the trooper uttered a Circinni curse.  
“I wasn’t alone,” she said in an exasperated tone that betrayed it wasn’t the first time she’d had to. “Sergeant mab-Boudica was with me.”  
As if summoned by her name, the Sergeant settled a hand on Lisenne’s shoulder, drawing her away from the confrontation.  
“I think she’ll be alright,” Lisenne opined, and Moiread nodded.  
“The medics checked her for a concussion while we were waiting for you all to come,” said the Sergeant.  
“Where’s her assailant?” Lisenne said.  
“Strapped to a gurney. They’re waiting for him to come out of it.”  
“Anybody we should know?” she wondered. Moiread shrugged.  
“Michael Dolors,” mab-Boudica said. Out of the corner of her eye, Lisenne saw Randall stiffen. Distractedly, she waved him over.

“Michael  _James_  Dolors?” Randall wanted to know.  
“Yeah,” Sergeant mab-Boudica nodded, “according to his ID card.” They both regarded the Praetor then.  
“He works in the Rotunda,” Randall said, and Lisenne frowned.  
“I was hoping this was harmless,” Lisenne admitted. “How likely is it he’s taken some bad Slaught and took a swing at Private mab-Nuala more or less at random?” She looked grim, and Randall shook his head.  
“I’ve no idea what he’d even be doing here; he lives in the Garden District six levels up.”  
The two women sighed in unison and exchanged a look before Lisenne turned towards the medics gathered around the back of their transport.

“How long until he comes around?” Lisenne wanted to know.  
“Do you want us to wake him?” one of the medics shouted back, reaching up to push his glasses back up his nose.  
“What did he take?” she asked, walking over.  
Glasses shrugged. “Obscura,” he said, “or something in that family.”  
“Wouldn’t account for the aggression,” Lisenne noted.  
“No, it wouldn’t, but he’s tested negative for the other majors."  
“I’ll ask the Guardian,” Lisenne said.  
“No need, dear,” said Rand, touching her shoulder and withdrawing to peel the Eyes away from mab-Nuala. One of the Guardians pulled himself up into the treatment bay and the medic adjusted the taper on an IV. Lisenne hauled herself up after the Eye, and Randall after her.

Michael Dolors was an unassuming figure, with sandy blonde hair and a close-cropped beard. She’d have guessed him in his fifties, and it it was little wonder his scrap with Liadhain had left his left eye puffy and blackening; his job at the Rotunda clearly involved a lot of time behind a desk. As he roused, blood leaked from his nose and he sputtered until one of the medics propped him upright. His eyes were the same violet as the livid bruise around them.

“Do you know where you are?” asked the medic.  
“No,” the man admitted. “This is a Samaritan,” he said then, and the medic nodded.  
“What’s your name?” he asked then.  
“Michael Dolors,” he replied, trying to lift a hand to wipe at his face. When the medic sponged the blood from his skin, he winced.  
“Where’s the last place you remember being?” the doctor wanted to know.  
“I’d rather not say,” Dolors admitted, his gaze resting on the eye staring back from the Chastener’s lapel.  
“Have you ever taken any kind of drugs?” asked the doctor.  
“What? No!” Dolors spluttered.  
“It’s very important that you tell us so we can treat you properly.”  
Dolors was still staring at the Eye. “I’ve never done that in my lifetime,” he said. “I’m an upstanding citizen.”  
“Do you remember where you were before?” the doctor asked.  
“Yes,” he said, his hands shaking.  
“Do you remember meeting Liadhain mab-Nuala?” wondered the doctor.  
“The offworlder girl from the news?” he asked. “We’ve never met.”  
“She’d disagree with that,” Lisenne snorted despite herself.  
The Chastener scowled over at her. “You attacked her,” he told Dolors then, and the color drained from the man’s face. “Why?”  
“I never met her,” Dolors protested.

“Is it possible you were drugged at the place you visited?” wondered the doctor.  
“I suppose?” Dolors admitted. “It’s — this has never—“ he began, then fell silent, shaking his head.  
“Where were you?” the Chastener asked then. There was a silence then that stretched on a long time, the medic checking his readouts.  
“Do you know who I am?” Randall Columbers asked then.  
“Senator Columbers’s boy,” Dolors said, “Praetor of Gennesaret.”  
“If I give my word you won’t face any legal repercussion for whatever you tell the Eyes tonight, would that help?” Randall asked then.  
The Chastener let out a growl of protest, but Randall simply stared him down. “Done,” he said grudgingly.  
“Yes,” Dolors said. “I was … I was visiting my mistress.”

Lisenne’s eyes closed, and she exhaled a nasal sigh. She looked over at Randall after a long moment, her jaw set, and she saw him flinch in the force of her gaze. It was a satisfying reaction, but it did nothing to assuage the fact that Dolors had just condemned a woman to death.

Randall looked from her to the Eye, and he said nothing. Lisenne stood, then, and pushed past him. She lingered at the mouth of the doorway. “Where is she?” Lisenne asked then, and stared Dolors down until he told her.

A moment later, Randall emerged after her, and she rounded on him. “You know what you’ve just done,” she accused.  
“I’ve saved her miserable life, Lisenne,” he told her immediately, and the fight and fury emptied with such a swiftness that she felt hollow for a moment.  
“Give me your hand-vox,” she demanded. “I need to call Grainne and tell her what’s happened.”

— — — — —

In the end she left with Sergeant mab-Boudica, Randall Columbers, and two of the Eyes, including the one that had questioned Dolors. They led the way deeper into the hive’s foundations, where the air became more fetid and stale. The recycling didn’t quite scrub out the scent of mold and garbage, and for a moment Lisenne thought of the homeworld she hadn’t seen in three decades. Randall's grip on her arm was growing tighter with every step, his nervousness spilling over into her own mien. She read a few scraps of graffiti as they passed, most of it in the native argot, some of it in malformed High Gothic. Then she laughed.

“What?” Randall wanted to know.  
“‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down,’” she said.  
“Stop that,” he sighed.

The address turned out to be rather unassuming, and Lisenne wondered why Dolors would take a mistress who was squatting in a place like this. Then she thought of the techpriests at their créches, the woman screaming and straining, and she frowned, seeing the desperation in the circumstance.

“Wait here,” she told Rand, and started for the door. She heard three pairs of boots behind her. “You too!” she snapped at the Eyes, who looked dubious until Columbers nodded.

The interior foyer was a narrow room barricaded by another set of painted steel doors, that same phrase scratched into the enamel. She paused there, hand on her bolter, and put her shoulder to the door. It didn’t move. A moment later, a crackle of static split the air.  
“What’s the password?” asked a woman.  
“I don’t know,” Lisenne admitted. Moiread mab-Sibeal gave her a venomous look.

Nevertheless the door gave way, and Lisenne stumbled into a brightly-lit room, its ceilings low, its walls hung with crimson fabrics. It was rich in design, the air redolent with spices; she’d been received poorer places in the city’s upper spires. Three pairs of violet eyes looked up at her from surprised faces, and the women stood, scurrying away from the commissar and guard. Her gaze swept the room, and with a sigh she holstered the bolter, lifting her hands in apologetic supplication.

“Who’s in charge here?” Lisenne wanted to know.  
“That would be me,” said the voice from the vox. Its owner was dark-haired, her skin pale as though she hadn’t seen sunlight for some time. Her eyes were narrowed at the pair. “It’s alright, girls,” she soothed the other women. “Go back to your work. Come with me, ladies.” Lisenne stepped over a book as she passed, glancing down at its pages. It was blank, but for a few rudimentary letterforms, and she frowned.

The woman—madam, Lisenne supposed— led them back down a narrow hallway, past a handful of closed doors to, at last, an office. She stood behind her desk, fingertips barely grazing the wood, and leveled her gaze at the offworlders. “You’re the Barghests,” she said, lifting a hand to close a blotter open on the desk. Lisenne glimpsed the columns of ordered sums.

“Commissar Lisenne Faulkner,” she agreed, “and this is Sergeant Moiread mab-Boudica. Which means you have us at a disadvantage.”  
“Call me June,” said the madam.  
“I’m surprised to find a place like this so far down,” Lisenne said then.  
“You mean a brothel?” June laughed.  
“They usually aren’t so well-appointed,” the Commissar admitted, smiling despite herself. At her side, mab-Boudica fingered her lasgun.  
“We have a rather demanding clientele,” June admitted. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. Lisenne pursed her lips, then nodded. “Have a seat. Cora?” she called, leaning toward the door. “Tea for our guests,” she said. Lisenne took a seat, doffing her cap and settling it in her lap. The Sergeant remained standing, her tattooed lips pressed into a thin line. “So,” said June. “What can I do for you, Commissar? I had assumed from the newscasts you wouldn’t be interested in my girls, but maybe I was wrong,” she said, glancing over Lisenne’s shoulder toward Moiread.  
Lisenne felt her cheeks flushing. “Nothing like that,” she said quickly. “Sit down, mab-Boudica,” she added a moment later. “It makes me nervous when you do that.”  
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Sergeant, unslinging her weapon and settling in with a frown.

A moment later, a blonde waif came in with a tea service, and June smiled at her as she set it down on the desk. The madam took up a small cup of dried flowers, upending the contents into the teapot. “So,” she said a moment later, a pleasant aroma begun to waft into the already-perfumed air. “If not that, what brings you here?”  
“I had some questions about one of your clients, actually,” Lisenne admitted.  
“I’m not sure I want to betray that sort of trust,” June said with a frown.  
“I already know his name,” Lisenne said then. “Michael James Dolors?” June made no reply in word or gesture. “Did he ever … hit any of your girls?” Lisenne wondered.

“I know you haven’t come on behalf of the Eyes,” June remarked then, beginning to pour the tea. “They’d never think to ask about something like that.”  
“He struck one of my soldiers,” Lisenne said.  
“How awful,” June pouted. “I trust she’ll recover?”  
“Yes,” Lisenne agreed.  
“That’s good,” said the madam, setting the teapot back in place and gesturing to the array of filled cups. “I’m sure you’ve lost enough already. I was incredibly sad to hear of the astropath’s death,” she continued. Lisenne leaned forward to pick up one of the teacups. Moiread followed suit dubiously, and June cradled the one that remained. The tea was astringent and herbal, but it left a warmth blooming in Lisenne’s stomach as she sipped it, the others following her lead.  
“No, he never hit my girls,” June said then. “I wouldn’t stand for it if a client ever did. That’s made very clear.”

“Most of your clients are rich?” Lisenne asked.  
“The poor have no need of my services,” June remarked. “That set of services, anyway.”  
“Why not?” Lisenne wondered.  
“It isn’t interdicted for a married couple to procreate,” said the madam. “They still vaccinate you after marriage. The rich will adopt their clones, but the poor still do things the old-fashioned way, and all the natal care will cost is your dignity,” June said tartly. “Among the rich the conditioning is stronger, so it’s mostly politicians’ wives who refuse their husbands.”  
“The same politicians who make those laws in the first place?” Lisenne asked with a frown.  
“I’ve never served Randall Columbers, if that’s what you mean,” June said with a smile. Lisenne took another sip of her tea, then lifted a hand to rub at her neck where the wool of her collar scratched against her skin. She glanced over as Sergeant mab-Boudica leaned forward to set her empty teacup aside.  
“Won’t you be killed if you’re caught?” Lisenne wondered then. “The money can’t be  _that_  good.”  
“It isn’t the money,” June admitted. “That’s not why my girls work for me, I mean,” she said.  
“Then?”

“I teach them,” June said. “A few of them can read; one of them keeps the books. We’ll die if we’re caught now, but what would their lives be, otherwise?” She had a point, Lisenne reflected. “It won’t be like this forever,” June said.  
“You think you can influence policy from here?”  
“I can’t,” June admitted, “but my clients can. A few words, from my mouth to their ear …”  
“You’re in bed with the secessionists,” Lisenne said thickly, amazed it had taken her that long to catch on.  
“When you’ve seen what loyalty has to offer, wouldn’t you be, too?” June asked then.

“That’s heresy,” Lisenne said slowly, letting the empty teacup spill from her hands as she stood. Moiread mab-Boudica was rising beside her, fumbling for her weapon.  
“Is it?” June asked, coming to her feet and crossing to stare Lisenne down, violet eyes intent upon green. “Think about it. Part of you knows I’m right,” she said then. “You know that everything about this system is wrong.” She pressed her lips together. “Listen to me very closely, ladies,” June purred, and Lisenne went still. “You want to help me, don’t you?”  
“Yes,” agreed Moiread, and a moment later an assent spilled from Lisenne’s lips.

“That’s what it’s all about,” June told her then with a smile. “Wanting. You never desire something more than when it is forbidden to you,” June purred. Lisenne felt the heat of her blood in her face. “When I was told I couldn’t read, I couldn’t leave home alone, when I was told all the things I could not do, they became precious to me. And I am forbidden; we are forbidden. The things you do are forbidden, too, and that makes us desired. Don’t you see?” she asked, glee in her voice.  “I am sorry about the astropath. I am; I didn’t want to have to do that,” she said sincerely, her full lips drawn down in a contrite moue. “But you could help us. If you wanted.”

June leaned in then, pressing her mouth to Lisenne’s own, gently. Her kiss was sweet and hot and disorienting, as if Lisenne felt the world shift beneath her feet. In that instant, she wanted nothing more than to do whatever June asked of her.

“Sorry, Commissar,” said a voice a moment later, and then there was pain and blackness.

 

— — — — —

When Lisenne came to, she was looking up at the ceiling of a Samaritan, and her nose was bleeding. She laughed softly, and felt a slight pressure on her hand. “Let  _go_ _,_ ” she giggled.  
“I’m sorry,” said Randall Columbers.  
“Do you know where you are?” asked a medicae. Not Glasses.  
“This is a Samaritan,” she said, feeling a fog over her mind that had just begun to dissipate. She wrinkled her nose.  _De-Tox_ , she decided. “I was at a brothel. Somewhere there’s a man with a black eye telling the same story.” Another laugh, less uproarious than the first.  
She heard the shuffle of feet, and someone dropping into a chair. “Nice going, Commissar,” said Major mab-Sibeal.  
“Don’t back-sass me,” said Lisenne. “I’ll flog you.”  
“What’s the last thing you remember?” mab-Sibeal asked.  
“The madam made me tea,” Lisenne replied. “Is mab-Boudica okay?”  
“She’s fine,” the Major said. “She drugged you. The madam, I mean.”  
“I figured,” Lisenne admitted, shifting her weight slightly, feeling a small, heavy box press to her heart. She looked over at Randall Columbers. “Go home,” she told him then, pursing her lips. Back to the Major: “Did we catch her?”  
“Yeah,” she said. “Moiread cold-cocked  _her_ , too.”  
“She’s …” Lisenne began. Then she paused, clawing her way back through her memories. “I think she killed Razia,” she said. “Or had her killed.”  
“Maybe,” Moiread admitted. “Her guest ledger was full of secessionists.”  
“Mystery solved,” Lisenne said with a small smile, letting her head loll back and rest upon the pillow. “Any chance we can just have them summarily executed and not fight a bloody war for compliance?” she asked.  
“Probably,” Randall said, and Lisenne was about to open her mouth to reply when there was a blurt of static.

  
“PEOPLE OF GILEAD,” boomed every vox in Lisenne’s hearing. “STANDBY FOR THE ARRIVAL OF THE EMPEROR’S MOST HOLY INQUISITION.”


	3. Chapter 3

Lisenne recognized the privilege inherent in being quartered alone. They had taken a lot from her—starting with her sidearm and her report, tendered willingly and with gladness, but then proceeding toward anything with which she might harm herself or another. But they had been generous and put her here, where there was a bed and a desk and a small shrine of hammered gold where she might pray as she waited for them to need her. She had prayed and waited, marking time by meals and sleep with no window to look out over the world below. And she waited for the inevitability of her questioning. Lisenne wished she had her weapons to clean.

The Inquisition had probably turned their prow toward Gilead the moment Nathanos Hallet had reported its sighting. She had been brought in along with the ten women under her command; June and her girls had been retrieved before then. If they had come for Senator Columbers or his ersatz family, it was beyond Lisenne’s hearing.

Three days passed before the cadre of armored stormtroopers came to fetch her, inscrutable behind the dark glass of their visors. Unspeaking, unsmiling, they marched her through the black ship to a small, spare room, and sat her in a simple chair before a simpler table. They left her here to contemplate the light overhead and her sallow reflection in the questioning glass upon one wall. Frowning, the Commissar arranged her dark locks.

At last, after what felt like an eternity, the locks disengaged. The woman who came through the door was an imposing figure: tall and severely dressed in olive green wool, set off nicely by her dark skin. Lisenne frowned at the impulsive thought, and the woman frowned back, narrowing her eyes. They were an unusual golden hue, like a newly minted coin.

“Lisenne Faulkner,” she drawled then, moving to stand on the other side of the table. “Commissar, Circinni 38th, previously posted with the Petrostok Besiegers.”  
“Yes, ma’am,” said Lisenne. “At Emblem, ma’am.”  
“What foe did you fight there?” asked the woman.  
“Tyranids, ma’am,” Lisenne said, pressing her lips together at the memory. “And their genestealer heralds.”  
“I am Interrogator Violet Saint Millay. My superior, Inquisitor George Dillon Baudelaire, is spearheading this investigation on behalf of the Ordo Malleus,” said the agent.  
“I understand, ma’am,” the Commissar said by rote, feeling cowed. “You’ve read my report, I trust?”  
Millay gave her a look. “The questions here will be mine. Are we understood?”  
“Yes, ma’am,” Lisenne said then.

The Interrogator sat, producing a dataslate and paging through it slowly. “Why do you think we’ve come to Gilead?” she asked with a tone of utter disinterest.  
“I wouldn’t be able to say with any authority, ma’am,” said the Commissar. Millay lifted those brazen eyes from her reading to spear Lisenne on her gaze, and she added quickly: “If I had to guess, it would be to investigate the effects of the warp storms.”  
“And did you see any?” Millay wanted to know.  
“Very little,” Lisenne admitted. “They were very thorough in their efforts to mitigate,” she said. “Our astropath told me she never sensed another psyker.”  
“What do you think they did with them?” Millay asked.  
“Killed them, I expect.”  
“Like they killed your astropath?”  
Lisenne frowned. “Not in such a fashion, no.”

“What made her special?” Millay prodded.  
“I doubt if most of them are more than children when they—” she broke off then, shaking her head. “That isn’t it,” she said. “If they wanted to execute her they’d simply have shot her. Or hung her,” Lisenne said after a moment’s reflection.  
“So then what’s the motivation?”

“There’s an aspect of ritual in it,” Lisenne said. She leaned forward slightly, her shoulders hunched. She looked up at the Interrogator. “Did the brothel madam have her killed?” she asked, unflinching in the face of Millay’s silence. “She would have wanted Razia Sultana’s death to mean something. She would have made her a sacrifice. Sultana died because she was the conduit between Gilead and the Imperium, but she was made a sacrifice for other reasons.”  
“A sacrifice to whom?” Millay demanded then.  
“I don’t know,” Lisenne admitted, “but I think she wanted to feel … better about killing another woman.” A soft sigh. Lisenne wondered for a moment what June would have done to feel better about killing  _her_.

“Was it important she was a woman?” Millay continued to prod, her voice low and gravelly.  
“After the fact that she was an astropath, it was the most important,” said Lisenne.  
“Why?”  
“Because that’s what matters on Gilead,” Lisenne said. “No matter what, none of them travel alone. None of them read,” she said in exasperation, looking up at the Interrogator, dazzled by the glare of the light overhead. “True-born or replicae, rich or poor. Even I got issued a citation for standing too close to my escort.”  
“The replicae,” Millay said.  
“Yes,” Lisenne confirmed. “Randall Columbers.”  
“Do you believe Randall Columbers demonstrated free will in your acquaintance with him?”  
“I think Randall Columbers believed his will overrode everyone else’s,” Lisenne said, frowning.  
“And do you think he has a soul?”  
“I think to claim such a thing is a perversion of all humanity stands for,” she said thickly, and forbid herself to think well of him again. “I think he stood for the creation of more like himself, and claimed that the natural creation of new human life was the true perversion.”  
“Why?” Millay demanded, and Lisenne felt the faintest stab of will against her mind.  
“I think that during the warp storms, the creative act came to bear unforeseen consequences,” Lisenne blurted.  
“You didn’t mention that in your report,” Millay accused.  
“Not obliquely,” Lisenne admitted. “It was a difficult and untoward conclusion to come to.”  
“If I find out you’ve kept anything else from me …” said the Interrogator, standing. “You understand there will be consequences for your transgressions. You were a progena. Maybe some of your friends were chosen for my office. You remember their lessons?”  
“I live in service to the Emperor,” Lisenne promised. “It is not my aim to transgress against Him.”  
“Then  _don’t_ ,” said Millay bluntly, and had Lisenne taken from the room.

— — — — —

When they brought her back to the room she’d already begun to think of as hers, a meal was waiting for her, steaming, upon the desk. Next to it was a small, unassuming parcel that nevertheless made her stiff with anxiety. She glanced from the stormtrooper cadre to the lens of the pict-caster mounted high in one corner, but they left it with her. She tried to ignore it as she ate, but her stomach was too nervous to hold much in the way of appetite. She prayed and performed her ablutions, and she dutifully ignored the parcel for the whole of a day until it became obvious it would be left there.

 

In the end, she gave in, and pulled Randall Columbers’ clockwork from its nest of cotton. She teased the key from its feathers and wound it, briefly, letting it warble, but its tinny song grated on her nerves, and with an effort she prised the key loose. She thought of him as she looked on his gift, and after another long few moments she began to pry apart its panels. The enamel upon its battered surface splintered and flaked as she laid the construct open to bare the clockwork beneath. Bit by bit she disassembled the ersatz songbird until at last it was a collection of splints and gears, and she organized these carefully by their size and shape until it was impossible to tell what the thing had once been; until its shape no longer made a mock of natural life.

She slept then, and when she awoke, the bits of scrap that had once been a bird were gone.

— — — — —

The second time Interrogator Millay called upon her, the Rack stood in the center of the room, still as large and as dangerous as Lisenne remembered it from her days at the scholam.

A techpriest, its face anonymous behind its façade of chrome, looked down at her as she was strapped into place, electrodes lacquered to her skin by conductive paste. She shed a silent tear or two before Millay appeared, and hoped they didn’t betray her upon her cheeks.

She felt the pain lance through her, hot and unexpected, and she’d taken wounds before, from lasfire and worse, but this was worse somehow because there was no scent of ozone and meat with it to alert her of a source, there was only the pain that exploded behind her eyes and left her suddenly, taking all of her breath with it.

“Your name?” Millay demanded.  
“Lisenne Aurora Faulkner,” the Commissar panted.  
“Where were you born?”  
“Gunmetal City, Scintilla,” she managed to push past her lips.  
“That will do for a baseline,” Millay told the techpriest, who was dutifully bent over the panels.

Another jolt of pain, no less unexpected than the first. Lisenne’s muscles seized, leaving her taut and immobile even if she weren’t bound into place, staring up into the implacable brightness of the lamps overhead.

“Who killed Razia Sultana?” asked the agent.  
“June,” spat Lisenne. “June, the madam from the brothel.”  
“How?” Millay demanded.  
“She sent someone,” said the Commissar, her thoughts frantic. She heard the snap of the dial a moment before pain stole her senses from her. “She sent one of her clients,” Lisenne said. “She drugged him and she sent him.”  
“How do you know?” asked Millay.  
“She was going to do it to me,” Lisenne said, cold with sudden realization. “That’s why she drugged me. That’s why she drugged Sergeant mab-Boudica.”  
“What did the drugs do?”  
“They made me do whatever she wanted,” Lisenne laughed bitterly.  
“‘Made you,’” echoed Millay, looming over her, prying her eyelid apart and staring into Lisenne’s green eyes.  
“ _Yes,_ ” she shrieked then. The shock of sensation receded at last, and Lisenne felt her cheeks flush. By instinct she clamped her thighs together, and then she pressed her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry, but the tears fell anyway.

“Whose interests was she working in?” demanded the Interrogator.  
“She’d say her own,” Lisenne replied, and was chastised summarily with another jolt from the rack. She could feel her breathing growing shallower, her nipples high and taut against her blouse, and in the back of her mind she ran through every prayer printed in the back of her field guide.  
 _Fear is naught,_  she told herself,  _for my faith is strong;_  but it didn’t feel like it.  
“The Prince of Excess,” said the Commissar then, gritting her teeth, “though she’d call it a Queen.”  
“How do you know?” said Millay.  
“Do you think she would willingly align herself with a male power?” asked Lisenne, and she didn’t miss the look in Millay’s eyes.  
“No,” said the Interrogator rather than offer another reprimand. She looked down at the Commissar. “How long have you reacted in this fashion to corporeal punishment?” she demanded then, and Lisenne’s heart sank.  
“Always,” Lisenne sobbed.

— — — — —

Her body was still sore when they threw her into the cell, and it was a struggle to remain conscious. Sitting on the threadbare cot, Lisenne missed the luxury of her earlier room almost instantly. She drew her knees up to her chin then and wept beneath the spreading wings of a painted yellow aquila.

The chime of the shipboard vox roused her from uneasy dreams, and with a jolt Lisenne rose to her feet. She faced the icon and pressed her hands to her chest, head bowed, her cracking lips following along with the hymns piped in overhead.  
This was the Long Vigil, then, first day of Sanguinalia, and she had no candles to light for her parents, though if she’d had only one she might have saved it for her own soul.

Every fiber of muscle in her screamed protest with every movement, and so she knelt, prostrating herself before the Aquila, and Lisenne thought of Him-on-Earth, interred in the Golden Throne, the light of the galaxy. She thought of his martyred son, and with tears upon her cheeks, Commissar Lisenne Faulkner prayed the blood of Sanguinius, the sacrifice of Ollanius Pius, was enough to wash out the sin worked into her very flesh.

She pled and she bargained, wept and implored, her green eyes not seeing the hewn stone of the wall before her, but the Imperial Palace on Terra, reproduced over and over even in its minutest detail in painting and pictcast. Whatever damage her association with the soulless replicant human and the madam had done her, she prayed the Emperor in His beneficence would repair it.

Lisenne prayed to be made whole again, and reaffirmed her vow to spend her life in His service.

— — — — —

She ate nothing even before the fast officially began, and was kitten-weak when they dragged her from her cell again. Interrogator Millay was joined then by a man with hair the color of iron and unforgiving features, nearly as tall as the agent at his side.  
“Inquisitor,” she greeted him, but he said nothing as they laid her out on an incline, her ankles higher than her head.

“You’ve caused some difficulty for us,” Millay said. “Inquisitor Baudelaire believes we cannot trust to our usual methods with you,” she continued, locking the shackles about Lisenne, hands and feet. The commissar only nodded gravely, her green eyes closed.  
“I understand,” she said, and then Millay put a cloth over her face.

An instant later, water splashed down upon the shroud, plastering it to Lisenne’s skin. Instinctively she jerked in her bonds, gasping sharply, the cloth sticking to her lips. She coughed, lungs seizing, straining for breath. After a moment of respite the action was repeated, her body flooded with adrenaline, everything in her screaming with protest.  
“Your name?” asked Baudelaire, and someone mercifully pulled the cloth from her face long enough for her to answer.  
“Lisenne Aurora Faulkner,” she sputtered.  
The cloth was replaced over her mouth and drenched once more, and she could feel herself weeping, the hot salt of her tears washed away from her cheeks by the cold rush of water, continuing until her lungs screamed for air. She could scarcely exhale, and had to gasp for breath every time they questioned her.  
“Where were you going before you came to Gilead?” Baudelaire asked.  
“Aramos,” she said, “to Aramos to quell an uprising.”

It went on like that, and the Commissar thought every time that she would drown as she felt the water rush over her body, plastering her dark hair to her face and smothering her. His questions came like hammer blows in the moments of respite, some of them immediately relevant, some not, all of them chasing around after each other in her thoughts.  
 _Have you ever deliberately mutilated bodies? Have you ever permitted another to be punished for your misdeeds? Have you ever withheld useful data? Was there anything about your life at the scholam progenium you didn’t like? Have you failed in any way to live up to your own ideas of how you should be? Have you ever perverted an ethic? Is there anything you can’t forgive yourself for? Is there anything others should not forgive you for?_

_Is there anything you have sworn off being?  
_ _Is there anything you have sworn off doing?  
_ _Is there anything you have sworn off having?_

— — — — —

They left her there when she grew too fatigued to continue, and she slept, and dreamed of mouths in the depths poised to consume her. She dreamed of murdering Razia Sultana, of opening her throat like a second maw, scarlet and raw, of the burble of blood when the astropath tried to scream. She dreamed of tearing out her viscera, of taking out her useless eyes, of taking her apart piece by piece until she was a collection of meat and bones, arranged by their size and shape until it was possible to tell what the thing had once been; until its shape no longer made a mock of ersatz songbirds.

She awoke at a blare of sound that made her think the ship was coming apart, that they had hit a shoal in the Warp on the way to Aramos, but in the brief silence she remembered all that had passed between then and now. Light flashed against her eyes in pulses, and with each blink the ship roared, drowning out the sound of her own heartbeat, which raced to catch up to the roll of sound.

A moment of respite allowed her to catch her breath, and then it began again, less a sound than a pulsing and a sense of pressure in her ears. She screamed, but she could still feel it pulsing through her, the light still lancing against her eyes.

In the darkness, bound, listening to the roll of horror just on the edge of hearing, Lisenne felt another mind touch her own. It was sharp, like a blade plunged into the very core of her consciousness—neither hot like the pain upon the rack nor as cold as the ablutions that had threatened to drown her, but painful all the same. The mind upon her own laid her open, directing her thoughts with the pulse and swell of that thrum that rumbled through her chest. She had stopped screaming; he had made her stop screaming.

Baudelaire made himself known to her, then, but he still held her mind in his grasp, and after a moment she felt the touch of Millay’s fingers shaping her thoughts as well. In concert, Inquisitor and Interrogator spread her consciousness between them like a specimen under glass, and she could feel their scrutiny in places she never expected.

Lisenne thought of her parents, dead in the Emperor’s service, and she wanted to weep, but she hadn’t the autonomy for it any more. Other memories, then, of her youth, her education. Of her time as a Commissar-Cadet, and of feelings and things without form and name; primal parts of her that had been dragged into the strobing lights. They tasted her memories and sniffed at her character, hunting out the seed of corruption that her reaction on the rack had betrayed, and as she had during the Long Vigil, Lisenne prayed fervently.

She lived the whole of her life on that table, her dark hair matted to her forehead by sweat, every action held up to a magnifying glass and examined, then set aside as worthy or unworthy.

 _Sleep_ _,_  Baudelaire told her when he withdrew. Exhausted, she complied.

— — — — —

When she had awoken it was Emperor’s Day and she was no longer shackled to a table. Interrogator Millay had come alongside the guards to bring her dinner and a handful of her personal effects.

“We found nothing to implicate you in the events unfolding on the planet’s surface,” she had said, “although I would strongly caution you to be more judicious in selecting those with whom you keep company. You will be restored to your ship along with the others we’ve chosen to release when action on the planet’s surface is concluded.”

And Lisenne had slept then, though it would be a stretch to say she slept easy. She had eaten little on that day—or the next, when the Inquisitor himself had brought her meals, following the custom of the feast. He had said little at the time, only performed his work and quit her company, and the exhausted Lisenne had been glad enough.

And then it was Expurgation, the last day of the feast, and she had been summoned to an audience chamber along with the Barghests; along with much of the ship’s staff. In the end, Baudelaire, flanked by Millay and a half-dozen other agents, had pronounced his judgment: June, and all of her girls, were executed first for conspiring with Ruinous Powers. Their clients, the ones they had drugged and coerced, followed. Then the men of Gilead responsible for the creation of their reprehensive replicae system. All of them were consigned to the pyre, and Lisenne watched Benjamin and Randall Columbers burn.

And then, with Lisenne and the Barghests looking on—all the Barghests, including those who had never left the ship—Inquisitor Baudelaire passed sentence on the whole of the Warp-tainted world.

The sound of the torpedoes leaving their tubes rumbled through Lisenne’s chest, and she saw, for just a moment, a strobe of light that paralyzed her with fear. The void screens were up; the whole of the ship looked down on the world below as the warheads fell upon its cities. Blossoms of cleansing fire erupted into Gilead’s atmosphere.

Lisenne folded her hands in her lap, sitting beside her command staff, watching the world burn, and she felt no pity.


End file.
